The HAPI Compass framework
A simple four point system to finding alignment and giving yourself direction, designed to help you to build a successful and thriving career that nourishes you mind, body, and soul.
Hi,
It took me years of tinkering, hundreds of tiny adjustments, countless failed experiments, and more than a few existential crises, to develop the HAPI Compass, and it’s become foundational to everything else I teach.
At its core, the HAPI Compass is a four-point system designed to help you find alignment and direction in your business. It’s about learning how to triangulate yourself and solve the right problem with the right solution.
(H)eart
Heart isn’t only about inspiration. It’s about whether a project is worth doing—not in theory, but in reality. It asks: Is this thing sound, clear, and aligned? Or is it broken, bloated, and soul-sucking?
This is where so many entrepreneurs suffer; not because their ideas are bad, but because they’re trying to execute projects that are fundamentally misaligned with reality, market feedback, or their actual desires.
Heart is where you interrogate a project before you give it your time, energy, and resources. You ask:
Does this project make sense?
Is it built on a shaky premise?
Are the goals clear, the effort worth it, the outcome desirable?
A Heart-aligned project isn’t necessarily fun. Sometimes it’s hard, but hard is worth it. What you’re looking for is worthwhile.
And when it’s not worthwhile? That’s a Heart misalignment. The question isn’t “Will following my Heart make me money?” The question is “Can I build a sustainable career without it?” And the answer, for most business owners, is no.
Common Heart Challenges
You’re halfway into a project and realize you hate every minute of it
The work feels brittle, slow, or bureaucratic because of poor structure
You’ve launched something that flopped, and now you’re stuck supporting it
Customers hate it, reviews are bad, and fixing it would cost more than it’s worth
The scope is vague, the payoff unclear, and you’re bleeding energy
Heart Solutions
Project Scoping: Before you start, define exactly what success looks like, how you’ll get there, and where the risks are.
Brutal Audit: Review every active project: Do I enjoy this? Is it performing? Would I choose this again today? If not, cut, pause, or sell it.
Shut It Down: Every project should come with a “pull the plug” clause. When does it become a sunk cost?
Build With Feedback: Don’t make big bets in isolation. Get proof-of-concept from real users before you scale.
Permission to Quit: If it sucks, you hate it, and it’s not working, you’re allowed to walk away. Quitting isn’t failure. It’s alignment.
Why Heart Is Unique: Heart is about project fitness. Not just do you love the idea, but is it solid, buildable, and actually delivering? A Heart-aligned business doesn’t mean every project is fun. It means the hard stuff is worth doing.
(A)udience
Your Audience are the people orbiting your ideas, ready to champion them, amplify your reach, and fall deeply in love with what you create.
Finding your Audience means understanding who actually needs the stories you’re telling. It’s about building genuine connections with customers who will become superfans, not just extracting value from random strangers on the internet.
When your Heart aligns with your Audience, magic happens. You’re not trying to convince people to care about your work, you’re finding the people who are already predisposed to love it.
If Heart is about the project, Audience is about the market.
Your Audience point on the compass helps you identify the specific humans who are already looking for what you’re creating. They’re out there right now, searching for products like yours, frustrated that they can’t find enough of what they want.
Your job isn’t to persuade everyone to read your work. Your job is to make yourself findable to the people who are already seeking what you offer.
This shift from convincing to connecting changes everything about how you approach marketing. Instead of feeling slimy and sales-y, you’re simply saying “Hey, if you’ve been looking for what I got, then I have that thing.”
Audience isn’t just a demographic profile or a segment in your CRM. It’s the real humans who resonate with your approach, need what you offer, and are actively looking for solutions you’re uniquely qualified to provide.
Common Audience Challenges
You’re talking to people who don’t value what you do
Your messaging attracts followers but not buyers
Your clients consistently ask for things you don’t want to deliver
You’re building offers based on guesses instead of real feedback
You’ve outgrown your audience, but haven’t shifted your positioning
Audience Solutions
Define Your Bullseye Buyer: Who are your top 10 favorite past clients or customers? What do they have in common?
Reverse Engineer Offers: Build based on real requests, not hunches
Run Messaging Experiments: Test different angles to see what resonates with the right people
Segment Strategically: If you’re speaking to multiple types of people, separate your comms so they’re each heard clearly
Retire Misaligned Channels: If your audience hangs out on LinkedIn and you’re killing yourself on TikTok, cut it
Why Audience Is Unique: Audience is your calibration to reality. It forces you to get honest about who’s actually responding, what they need, and how you can best reach and serve them. It ensures your message lands in the right inbox, and that your business isn’t built on wishful thinking.
(P)rioritization
Prioritization is about deep focus on one high-leverage move at a time. You let it pay off, then reinvest the space and cash it creates to widen your runway and buy yourself time for what actually matters.
This is the hardest point for most entrepreneurs because we’re wired to chase shiny objects, but Prioritization is what separates founders who build sustainable careers from those who burn out after two years of frantic activity that leads nowhere.
Every week, you’re bombarded with new opportunities, strategies, and platforms. TikTok is hot. Substack is essential. You need a podcast. You should be doing Kickstarters. Direct sales. Speaking gigs. Patreon. Courses.
All of these can work. None of them work if you’re trying to do them simultaneously while also, you know, building a company.
Prioritization asks you to get ruthlessly honest about what actually moves the needle for your specific situation right now. Not what worked for that person you follow on Twitter or what the guru promised in their course. What will create meaningful progress toward your goals given your current resources, constraints, and season of life.
This means saying no to good opportunities so you can say yes to great ones. It means finishing what you start before jumping to the next thing. It means being willing to look like you’re moving slower than everyone else while actually building something that lasts.
The Prioritization point on your compass helps you ask: “Of all the things I could do, what’s the one thing that, if I did it well, would make everything else easier or unnecessary?”
Then you do that thing. And only that thing. Until it pays off.
Common Prioritization Challenges
You’re stacking too many major initiatives at once and nothing is moving
You’re doing low-impact work because it feels urgent
You’re reacting to noise instead of driving a plan
You keep abandoning half-built assets for new shiny ones
You’re saying yes to opportunities without weighing the cost of focus
Prioritization Solutions
The One-Thing Method: Choose one thing that, if finished, would unlock growth, space, or clarity for everything else
Win Condition Mapping: Define what “done” means for every initiative. No more open loops.
Stacking Limits: One major project per 90 days. That’s it.
Work Backward from Constraints: What can you actually finish, given your energy, resources, and bandwidth?
Kill List Reviews: Every month, ask: what am I carrying that no longer serves me?
Why Prioritization Is Unique: Prioritization is about strategic momentum. It’s not enough to be busy. You need to be building in the right direction. This compass point ensures you’re not scattering your effort across things that don’t compound.
(I)ncome
Income isn’t just about revenue. It’s about sustainability. You’re not just trying to make money, you’re trying to make money in a way that works long term. Income is what sustains your ideal life while fueling the creative work that lights you up.
The Income point of your compass helps you figure out what “enough” means for you, then build systems to generate it in ways that align with your Heart, serve your Audience, and fit within your Prioritization strategy.
Once you know your numbers, you can design income streams that align with the other three points on your compass. There’s no single right answer. There’s only what works for you, in your life, with your goals and constraints.
Common Income Challenges
Inconsistent cashflow that causes feast-or-famine panic
Revenue streams that rely on burnout-level effort
Offers that sell but suck your soul
Revenue looks good, but profit margins are terrible
You’re not charging enough to make your model work
Income Solutions
Cashflow Mapping: Know when and how money hits. Predictability is power.
Effort-to-Earnings Ratio: Audit your income streams: which ones require the most effort per dollar?
Revenue Model Alignment: Are you trying to run a high-volume model with low visibility or team size? That won’t work.
Pricing Checkpoint: Are you charging for the full value and impact of what you deliver?
Bridge Offers: Short-term services that provide immediate cash while you build long-term assets
Why Income Is Unique: Income is your stabilizer. It makes every other compass point possible. You can’t prioritize well if your cashflow is in crisis. You can’t quit a bad project if you’re financially strapped. You can’t speak clearly to your audience if you’re in survival mode. Income gives you choices, and choice is the foundation of strategic clarity.
(B)elief and (E)mbodiment
Before we end, we need to talk about two foundational elements that aren’t technically part of the HAPI Compass but are absolutely essential to making it work. We don’t add them to any one category because they are fundamental to every category.
(B)elief is your mindset. It’s the stories you tell yourself about what’s possible, what you deserve, and what success means. If your beliefs are working against you, no framework in the world will help.
I’ve worked with incredibly talented people who sabotage themselves at every turn because they don’t actually believe they can succeed. They believe they’re not good enough, that they missed their window, that they don’t have what it takes, that their niche is too saturated, that customers won’t want their work.
These beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you believe you’ll fail, you’ll unconsciously make choices that lead to failure. You’ll give up too soon, avoid necessary risks, or never truly commit to your goals.
The HAPI Compass can show you the way, but you have to believe the destination is reachable. You have to believe you’re capable of getting there. You have to believe your work has value and your goals are legitimate.
This doesn’t mean toxic positivity or pretending obstacles don’t exist. It means doing the internal work to identify and dismantle the belief systems that keep you stuck.
(E)mbodiment is about the physical experience of being a human. How you care for your body, manage your energy, and create sustainable work practices. You can’t build a thriving career if you’re burning yourself out or ignoring your physical needs.
Embodiment means recognizing that you’re not just a brain producing words. You’re a whole human being who needs rest, movement, nourishment, and care. Your physical state directly impacts your creative output, your decision-making, and your ability to sustain a long-term career.
This isn’t indulgent. It’s practical. An entrepreneur who sleeps well, moves regularly, and manages their energy sustainably will outperform and outlast the one who treats their body like an inconvenient vessel for their brain.
The HAPI Compass shows you where to go. Belief gives you the confidence to take the journey. Embodiment ensures you have the energy and health to actually get there.
Seek and you will find
The HAPI Compass is now yours to use. I’ve given you the framework, the concepts, and the questions to ask. But the specific application? That’s entirely personal.
There’s no single path to a sustainable career. There are thousands of paths, and you get to choose yours.
The compass just helps you stay oriented while you walk it.
Start by identifying where you currently are on each point. Be ruthlessly honest. You can’t navigate from where you wish you were. You have to start from where you actually are.
Then choose one point that needs the most attention right now. Not all four. One.
Maybe you’ve been doing work that doesn’t align with your Heart, and you need to reconnect with what you actually want to create. Maybe you’ve been building an Audience of the wrong people and need to shift your focus. Maybe your Prioritization is scattered and you need to narrow your focus. Maybe your Income strategy isn’t working and needs revision.
Pick one. Work on that. Use the resources available for that point to help you make progress. Then, when you’ve made meaningful movement on that point, check your compass again. See where you need to adjust next.
This is how you build a career: one intentional choice at a time, always checking your compass to make sure you’re still heading in the right direction.
You will drift. You will get lost. You will make wrong turns and waste time on dead ends, but if you keep your compass handy and check it regularly, you’ll always be able to find your way back.
That’s the promise of the HAPI Compass. Not that you’ll never get lost, but that you’ll always be able to orient yourself and keep moving toward the career you’re trying to build.
So grab your compass. Check your position. Choose your next direction.
And start moving.
Definitely having trouble with prioritizing now.